“Oh, shut up, Geoffrey. If you don’t stop accusing me of murder, I’m going to kill you.”

Carol Quinn is a serial killer. Seven murders have been attributed to her – all killed for perfectly good reasons in her mind – and a few more happened off the record. But that was in the distant past. She’s served her time and now just wants to live her life out in the Sheldon Oaks luxurious retirement home. She just needs to keep her past hidden – especially to her immediate group of friends. Especially as they happen to be a former police detective, a former pathologist and a former Home Secretary!

But then a resident – a former police commissioner – falls from the roof, although it wasn’t the fall that killed him. With Carol’s secret exposed, the easy solution for the local constabulary is to arrest her. Even her new friends assume she did it. So the only way to prove her innocence is to find the real killer – preferably without murdering anyone else along the way…

Oh, flipping heck. I knew  October was going to be a tricky month for the Puzzly. We’ve got new books from L C Tyler, Vaseem Khan, Suzy Aspley and Ross Montogomery, all of who have won Puzzlies before, and J S Savage then turns out an excellent collection of short stories, boosting his chances by doing my Five Books interview and even dedicating his book to me! So I was already juggling five possibilities… and then I read this one.

It was just meant to be a convenient cosy read – 99p on Kindle when I spotted it – but stone the crows, this is a wonderful read. I was quite hopefully when I saw the first two promotional quotes were from Miranda Hart and Aisling Bea, but they’re quite right – this is a genuinely funny book. But it’s not just played for laughs, the characters have real heart and I found myself caring about what happened to all of them – well, the central four anyway, and the long-suffering DS Welsh. Everyone else was a bit on the shifty side, mainly because almost everyone else was up to something or other.

As for the mystery, this isn’t like some other murder clubs. This is a clever mystery with clues leading to the solution. Admittedly, I thought one aspect was a bit too obvious – the two parts that you connect to work something out were a little too close together – but Craig managed to pull the rug out from under my certainty. I’d figured out a bit of it… but only a bit.

It’s perfectly paced, with a number of excellent reversals in the final act. The final section is particularly effective, providing perfect closure to the story. But even so,  there’s a sequel on the way… thank goodness!

So if you want an incredibly readable, genuinely funny and cleverly plotted mystery, why not give this one a go?